Scorpius Malfoy picked himself up off the ground. His
bones hurt from the fall. His head ached. His knees were bruised. He wasn't
exactly sure whether the rest of him was in working condition, but at least he
could not detect anythingactivelywrong with those body parts.
He'd have been lying if he'd said he felt fine, but on the other hand, he could
have been much worse. After all, he'd lasted five rounds of three minutes each
against James Potter, and that was more than anyone else in Hogwarts could say.

In fact, it had started well enough. Thanks to
Estelle's presumably well-intentioned pessimism, he had arrived at the
appointed place behind the lake rather well aware of the outstanding track
record that his opponent possessed.

"Oh, James will have you for breakfast, lunch and
dinner. He started in the Duelling club in his second year and by the end of it
was already known to have a rock-solid defense. By his third year no one wanted
to go up against him, not even seasoned seventh-years and he was crowned the
school champion at the end of term. Sensational is the only word," she had
gushed as they had made their way through a quiet corridor from the Slytherin
dorm to the greenhouses. "Right, I got that the last three times you said
it," grumbled Scorpius.

"He's got an impenetrable defense, you know.
Nothing can get past his shield spells. He wears you down for a few rounds and
then – BAM! You're hit by aReductoor a stinging hex before you know
what's what."

"You're such a comfort."

"Just doing my duty," she replied in a
modest tone. "No one's ever lasted more than five rounds against him, at
least not since he became the champ. His unbeaten streak goes back three
years…"

"Is that someone swimming in the ruddy
lake?" asked Scorpius, more to change the subject than anything else. He
had noticed a movement in the still reflection of the stars.

"Hmm, you may be right. Must be off their rocker,
whoever it is. It's dreadfully cold! I wouldn't want to get a toe in, let alone
swim."

"Might be one of the mer-people," Scorpius
pointed out. "Perhaps they come close to the surface at nights when
they're less likely to be seen."

James was accompanied by Trellawny, his second, a
pale, reedy boy from his year. Elk Moose was holding up an ancient gold watch.

"I'll be the referee, if that's all right with
you folks," he said. "Let's have a fair duel, shall we, or else I'll
have to put a stunning curse on the both of you. The seconds will appeal to me
if they feel anything is going amiss."

"I'm fine with that," said Scorpius, who was
aware of Elk Moose's reputation for being a fair man who wouldn't let being a
Gryffindor get in the way of his refereeing. James nodded as well.

"We'll have rounds of three minutes each with a
half-minute between them. The first to lose grip of his wand or suffer injury
resulting in an inability to continue will be the loser. No unforgivables, no
attacking after I call 'time'. I wish we had someone with decent healing skills
on hand. There's a couple of people in Ravenclaw who're good with their healing
spells and poultices but the more houses know about the duel the more danger we
are in of being found out."

"Lily? Isn't she a bit…" Estelle left the
question hanging, realising just in time that it would be rather unwise to use
the expression "thick as a brick" in reference to the sister of the
man who was about to duel her cousin and would probably massacre him anyway.

"She's a genius with healing spells,
somehow," said James. "I know, not the brightest girl in the world,
but has a gift for healing. Isthatyour broom, Malfoy? Where'd you
find it – a Muggle joke shop?"

He cast his patronus, a beautiful horse and sent the
message. Scorpius fingered his broom nervously. It was terribly weather-beaten,
true, the broom he had picked up the previous evening when he had met Rose. But
it had felt better than his own and that was important. He wondered if the
Potter boy was show-boating. Scorpius could produce a patronus himself, so he
wasn't intimidated or anything, but there was something about James' expression
– cold determination instead of the hot-blooded anger that Scorpius generally
had to face from him – that was unnerving.

"It's the best I have. Can we get on with
things?"

Lily arrived eventually, still rubbing her sleepy
eyes. James explained to her what was going on in a few terse
easy-to-understand words and she seated herself on a bench with a beatific
smile.

After that, the real business of the evening had
begun. To his credit, Scorpius had started well. For the first two rounds he
had hounded James with a barrage of spells. They didn't get through his famous
defense, but James wasn't able to retaliate either. The third began the same
way, but Scorpius felt himself tiring. At the half-way mark, as the time
interval between his spells began to prolong, James came into his own, shooting
a couple of hexes that Scorpius only just managed to block. Into the fourth
round, Scorpius was barely holding on, in fact, only the amazing responsiveness
of the weathered broomstick under him kept him in the air. His hand had taken a
hit when a spell from James grazed it and that made his own spell-work rather
wobbly for a while, but the break at the end of the fourth round came just in
time.

Lily cast a quick healing spell that had Scorpius
waving his hand about as good as new.

"Er, thanks, Miss. Potter," said Scorpius.

"All better now," said Lily with a bright
smile.

"You're not doing half-badly," Estelle said,
patting him on the back patronisingly.

"Partly skill, partly dumb luck," he
confessed.

"Actually, you're out-flying him," said Estelle.
"Keep it up a bit longer and he may tire enough for you to have a decent
shot at him."

"I'm not entirely sure I can keep this up a bit
longer," confessed Scorpius, just as Elk's voice rang out,
"Time!"

The fifth round started well for Scorpius. He circled
upwards into the air, instead of straight up and managed to catch James
off-guard for long enough to land anExpelliarmusbefore the Potter boy had his shield
up. The wand detached itself from James' hand and flew up in the air towards
Scorpius, but James, though taken off-guard, had not earned his reputation for
nothing. Before Scorpius realised quite what his opponent was doing, James had
accelerated towards Scorpius and caught his wand just inches from the Slytherin
boy, who had to dive to his left to escape collision. No sooner had James
recovered his balance than he had fired off a spell at Scorpius, who, still in
evasive mode, could not avoid being hit. The spell was a stunning spell and
Scorpius felt the stiffness take over his joints as he hurtled to what he was
sure would be a defeat.

As it was, the broom, apparently having a fairly
independent bent of mind, not only did not crash to the earth without his
control, but stayed afloat and took him circuitously around James, keeping him
out of harm's way even as his opponent fired hex after hex at him.

On the ground, Estelle clenched her fists as she saw
her cousin get hit by the stunner, and could only have a sigh of relief when
she realised that he was not heading earthwards, as he ought to have been.

"Elk! You've got to stop the fight!" she
said, running up to the boy.

"I don't see any reason why," came the
stubbon reply. "It's an evenly matched duel so far."

"It's gone on long enough. Call it a draw."

"Don't be ridiculous, Estelle! Wizards don't call
off matches because they go on too long. In the year 1846 a duel between Peter
Poliski and Maynard McTaggert lasted two days straight."

Stamping her foot in frustration, Estelle turned, to
find herself looking into the face of Lily, who was watching the proceedings
with open-mouthed fascination.

"Kid!"

"Yes?" came the response.

"Can you get your brother to..." Estelle
meant to say "stop", but her sentence was interrupted at that moment
by the sight of Scorpius being hit square on the chest by another stunning
spell, and this time, her cousin crashed straight to the ground just as Elk
called "Time!" again.

Both girls ran over to where Scorpius lay.

"Not a concussion, I hope," said Elk.

"He's hurt, Moose! You've got to call it
off."

"Not if he recovers before the start of the next
round," said Elk with exasperating calm, moving off to check on James, who
had landed safely some ten meters away.

"Shall I try a reviving spell?" asked Lily
solicitously.

"No! Look, Lily - can you go find Rose? Tell her
about the duel. Go, fast!"

Lily nodded and took off, without asking any
questions. Whether this was because she grasped the situation or just her
general lack of curiosity, Estelle could not tell.

"Where's she going?" asked Scorpius,
panting, as he slowly regained control of his faculties.

"Couldn't stand the stress," said Estelle.

Scorpius struggled to his feet and looked around. The
Potter girl had disappeared out of sight. Elk was marking time on his watch
while James and his second were jabbering to each other. His wand was in one
piece, which was good news. His wand arm, not so much.

Still, he struggled onto his broom and took off again,
just as their referee called the start of the sixth round. Scorpius did not try
any spells, but stuck to evasive action, keeping safely out of harm's way. His
arm did not feel up to any serious defensive spellwork, and against James
Potter, defensive spellwork was what kept a chap afloat. Thankfully, the skills
he had picked up playing Quidditch stood him in good stead as he weaved around,
his concentration purely on not being hit by James.

As it often turns out, though, evasive action was only
effective for a while. Trajectories and flight patterns become predictable, and
James was able to fire his spells in anticipation of Scorpius' movements. After
his fourth time barely escaping a fireball, Scorpius had no choice but to
careen backwards and fire a spell of his own. To his own surprise, it wasWingardium
Leviosa. Since it was also probably the last thing James had
expected, the spell met with no resistance - there really isn't a counter-curse
for a levitation spell, after all.

James teetered for several seconds in the air while
Scorpius, taking advantage of his opponent's discomfiture, fired a stunning
spell at him. It hit him squarely in the chest, knocking him off his broomstick
and Scorpius felt a sense of exultation as his opponent hurtled downwards.

"Time!" called Elk as Trellawney expertly
caught James with a cushioning spell before he hit the ground.

Scorpius descended quickly, and ran up to Elk, Estelle
close on his heels.

"That's a win!" said Estelle, before
Scorpius could.

"I called the end of the round," said Elk
calmly. "If he recovers before the start of the next, the duel is
on."

"That's..."

"Pretty fair, actually," admitted Scorpius,
knowing he had only survived to fight this round because of time being called
in the fifth.

A few feet away, James sat on the turf, shaking his
head. As always, Scorpius noted with disgust, the boy's ability to recover from
curses was phenomenal.

"Just keep hitting him with what he doesn't
expect," Estelle whispered urgently in his ear, dragging him away.

"How many times do you think I can pull off a
stunt like that?" Scorpius muttered.

"Hopefully, you won't have to," his cousin
replied. Surprised, Scorpius followed her gaze to where a slender figure was
running from the castle up towards them.

It did not take the eyes of love to identify this
figure to be Rose Weasley. By the time she was within twenty paces, even the
fact that it was past midnight could not hide the arched eyebrows and muddy
brown hair that was her hallmark.

"Look, nobody's getting hurt..." began
Scorpius in a half-apologetic tone. He was cut off when Rose pushed him aside
with what he would admit later was a surprisingly strong shove.

"Confringo!"
Rose's voice echoed through the night as she blasted the spell at her cousin.
Scorpius, who was standing closest to her, felt the heat generated by the spell
as it erupted from her wand and unerringly caught it's hapless target. The
explosive spell caught James squarely in the chest, and threw him a few feet
backwards, while engulfing him in a ball of flame.

"What the HELL, Weasley!" shouted
Trellawney, rushing to his friend's side. Everyone present heaved a sigh of relief
as James tottered back onto his feet, a few singed strands of hair being the
only parts of him noticeably affected by the incident.

"If I had it in me to cast spells that powerful,
my dear Trellawney," Rose continued in the same tone, "I most
certainly would have attempted the task. Given that I do not, this was really
little more than a cousinly fracas."

"If you're having cousinly fracases," came
the voice of Hugo Weasley as he trotted up to the group, followed closely by
Albus, Martin and Lily, "you can't leave the rest of us out, can you?
How'd 'ee do, James? Looking peaky. Elk, my boy, you get bigger and stronger
with each passing day. Trellawney! You festering old eyesore, you! Don't you
owe me five galleons?"

The persons he had addressed looked at him in the
state of helpless puzzlement that he so liked to inflict on people he
interacted with. Hugo allowed himself a self-satisfied smile.

Scorpius took advantage of the fact that nobody
actually had their eyes on him to grab Rose by the arm and lead her a few feet
away. She didn't resist.

"Look, it's not what it looks like," he
began, "James challenged me to a duel. It's all fair and -"

"And you just had to accept, didn't you?"
she interjected.

"If I hadn't, I'd be branded a coward throughout
Hogwarts, wouldn't I?" Scorpius said, his tone a touch defiant.

"So WHAT, Malfoy?" exclaimed Rose in a
louder tone. Scorpius glanced around to see if anybody had noticed, but they
had walked some distance away by now and Hugo appeared to be holding the group
enthralled with something or the other. (He was, in reality, enumerating how
exactly Trellawney had run up the massive debt of five galleons. As this involved
the fascinating story of how Trellawney had gotten involved with a muggle
cocktail waitress, it is easily understandable that his audience did not notice
Rose and Scorpius.)

"I don't know how your mind works, Rose, but I
was not going to back down..."

"Gladiatorial combat more your style, eh? What
did you see this as? You and James duelling over my honour? Some sort of
medieval joust?"

"Nothing of that sort, really. I was only
defending what's left of my honour," said Scorpius, a little sullenly.

Rose cast a disgusted look at him and turned back
towards the rest of the group.

"Rose?" Scorpius' voice behind her was
barely a whisper, but she stopped. Maybe it was something she had wanted to
hear.

"I won't pretend to be any better than I am,
Rose," said Scorpius in a calm, measured undertone. "But I won't take
the blame for being something I am not, either. Your cousin there challenged me
to a duel for no good reason that I can think of. He seems to be under the
impression that I am some sort of pasteboard villain bent on sullying your
lily-white honour – and by extension, I suppose, his. At this point it's less
about you than just a desire to shut him up. If he beats me – and he probably
will – at least that will be the end of it and you can join the rest of your
cousins in crowing over the loser Malfoy boy."

"Look, I never…" began Rose in a softer
tone.

"No, hear me out. I may be a Malfoy, but that
name hasn't meant anything to me beyond a crackpot grandfather who can't stop
going on about how the name once carried a lot of weight in wizarding circles.
I'd like to tell him it still does – it's mud. It means that I can't even
attempt to be a friend to a girl I like – and admire – very much for no fault
of my own."

"Scorpius…" Rose began, a blush beginning to
colour her cheeks.

"I won't be bothering you again, Rose, so –
please, don't interrupt. You've been-" he hesitated "- good to me at
a time when no one else was willing to look at me as anything other than what
my last name says about me. I felt you were something special from the time we
first met on the train coming to Hogwarts, four years ago. You stood up for me,
though you had no reason to. You spoke to me when no one else did. I don't
think you ever thought of me as a friend, exactly, but it meant the world to me
that you were willing to take me for what I am, rather than what my father or
grandfathers were before me."

He paused. Rose's eyes were fixed on him but she did
not speak. He could see Hugo behind her, now expostulating with expansive hand
gestures on how Trellawney had been dragged away by bouncers.

"I won't pretend that gratitude or friendship is
all that I feel for you, because that would be a lie," he resumed. "I
have feelings for you that I can't define, really. I don't know if it's love –
I know we're both too young to even be thinking in that direction – but I know
I can't help but wish we could be more than friends. You are beautiful to me,
Rose. Your hair when it tousles with the breeze, your eyes when they shine with
joy or even anger, your hands when you clench them into balls and rest your
head on them. Everything about you is magical, Rose, far more than anything
this wand can produce. And that's why I think it's best if I just – stay away
from you for what left of our school life. If it causes this much strife to you
and yours, it may be better just to, just forget that I ever knew someone as
perfect as you."

The boy's fists were clenched, the effort of speaking
seemed to have taken a toll on him, though he would have confessed, if pressed,
that he was really trying to hold back tears. Finished, he relaxed, letting out
an inaudible sigh before turning to return to the castle. Hugo had also
finished his story by now and had begun shepherding his little flock towards
the castle as well.

"I say, rather nice speech. What does he do for
an encore?"

The voice, clear as a bell, cut across the now-still
night. With a start, the ten children turned to look towards the speaker. Only
Rose, however, recognised her, and her heart sank.

"Cherry!" she exclaimed in a despairing
voice.

"Not alone, this time," smiled the woman.
"Have you met my rather fiery friend Maitreyi? She does a mean party trick
with those hands. We were out for a nightly swim and guess what we found on the
other side of the lake – your school! Now wasn't that lucky?"

Rose exchanged a nervous glance with Albus and Martin
as another woman stepped forth from behind Cherry. She was a little taller than
Cherry and had a mane of thick red hair. Her eyes seemed to glow a deep yellow
even in the dark. Cherry, who wore a black one-piece swimsuit, was nonchalantly
surveying the castle and the surrounding grounds. The other woman was dressed
in a dull grey cowl and overcoat. Surprisingly, she didn't seem to be even
slightly wet. And yet, the lake must have been the way they came. Scorpius and
Estelle recalled seeing the nightly swimmers as he had walked towards the site
of the duel, but could not really associate the beautiful dark-haired woman
opposite him with anything he could remember. Albus, Hugo and Martin recognised
from Rose's description exactly who stood before them by now, and Martin's
mention of the name Maitreyi was still fresh in their memory. James and
Trellawney, who knew the least, were caught between apprehension and arousal.
Cherry's swimsuit left little about her perfect shape to the imagination. Lily
was wondering if she should dye her hair red over the vacation.

"Well, Em. It' s your show. The instructions are
to burn down the castle."

The red-haired woman gave a grim smile before saying,
"Why don't I try a little preview before the main show, Cherry?"

"Now that's quite unnecessary, Em," said
Cherry, and Rose thought she detected a trace of apprehension in her voice.

"Oh shut up, Chitra," said the woman.
"It's showtime." In a moment, she whipped off the grey overcoat to
reveal a bright orange robe. Before the horrified eyes of the children, she
held out her right hand towards them, a finger pointed right at Rose. Her eyes
seemed to glow for an instant and then a steady stream of fire emerged from her
hand and darted towards Rose, engulfing her in a sheet of flame.

Featured Post of the Day

About Me

Percy Slacker was bitten by Schrodinger’s Cat as a child, and has since then combined a deep fear of cats with an
abiding conviction that he both exists and does not exist at the same
time. This existential doubt has led him
to grow up to be a writer while not actually being a writer.

He lives in Mumbai with his family, his book collection and a firm
conviction that modern civilization is in an interminable decline.